Term paper definition would be the same no matter whatever book or website you are consulting. Only the wordings would change a little. It can be defined in the following way: ‘it is a written assignment that is given to students to test their grasp of knowledge on a particular topic belonging to their course of study.'

Generally assignments are due at the end of a semester and the length varies from one assignment to another. The assignments are lengthy in nature and can stretch to three or four pages to several pages depending upon the educational level of the student.

The students are expected to research on the topic they are writing and cite their research material using a particular form of citation. These citation styles are MLA, Harvard, APA etc. The students have to follow the stylebooks related to the template in which they have been instructed to do their citations. Generally they have to learn just one style depending upon their course of study. For example students belonging to the humanities stream are asked to cite using MLA style of citation most of the times.. So they are just trained in this style by their tutors.

The students should always present their original work for evaluation, as the colleges are strictly against any instance of plagiarism. Even when a mistake has been committed unintentionally or unknowingly the student might have to face the charges of plagiarism. A student should always rewrite the ideas that he has taken from any one else's work or properly cite those ideas according to the guidelines of the style he is following. He should always apply principles, concepts or theories that has been learnt in the class giving it a unique angle to make the assignment authentic yet unusual. The idea behind these assignments is to identify the progress level of the student during a semester and also to see whether he would be able to apply the theoretical knowledge that he has gained to any practical situation in the future or not.

The assignment has a title, the introduction, the body and the conclusion. The title tells the reader what the topic of the essay is. The introduction lays down the thesis statement or main idea of the essay. The body discusses all the secondary ideas in separate paragraphs. While the conclusion, summarizes all the points that have been discussed in the entire text.

The assignment can be categorised into many categories like research analysis, critique, literature review etc. These are nothing but different forms of testing the student's grasp on a subject and his capability of applying that knowledge in any given situation. You should always follow the word limit that has been set for your assignment. Writing more or less than the word limit is certainly not acceptable.

Term paper definition is very simple to understand. You should always follow your tutor's instructions while writing it. Always aim to hand over a credible and well-researched piece of work to your tutor.